There exists a need for a home health care system in which both images and physiological data of a patient at home can be examined by a health care provider (doctor, nurse) at a remote location. The relentless pressure to reduce costs in the health care industry requires more efficient use of a health care professional's services. Although office visits are typical, many patients are either too ill, disabled, or too remote from a health care professional's office to be able to avail oneself of an office visit. As a result, home health care systems have been proposed that allow transmission of physiological data of a patient at home to a health care professional at a remote locate over a public telecommunication network, such as the public telephone system. The following patents and publication disclose various home health care systems using the common telephone to transmit physiological data of a patient, such as body sounds produced by a stethoscope, electrocardiogram (EKG) signals, blood pressure, artificial heart valve clicks, etc.
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These systems are disadvantageous for one or more of the following reasons.
1. The physiological data is transmitted as analog signals which are susceptible to noise and signal degradation resulting in corruption of the transmitted data.
2. Visual images of the patient are not transmitted.
3. The system is expensive, inconvenient, and/or inefficient.